Base Defense is a Joke

On this blog – and everywhere else except in the military – we’ve long recognized the vital strategic position of Guam and the need to defend it during war with China.  It couldn’t be more obvious.  We’ve also noted the apparent lack of urgency on the part of the military to institute any serious base defense plans.  Well, here’s a sad joke of an announcement about a first of its kind defense test for Guam.
 

The US military announced today the first-ever test intercept of a ballistic missile from its Guam-based missile defense system … [1]

Unbelievable.  We’ve been discussing the challenges and critical need for defense of Guam for years and only now have we conducted the first ever test of the ballistic missile defense?  What a joke.  Someone is not very serious about base defense.
 
But wait … it gets better.
 

The MDA described the event as a “pivotal step” towards a larger, more holistic Guam Defense System designed to take on multiple threats at once — a “persistent layered integrated air and missile defense capability.”[1]

Are you kidding me?  This implies we don’t currently have a layered defense capability for our most important base?  What has the military been doing for the last decade or two?
 
This seems to be saying that if China attacked, today, with more than one missile, we’d be helpless.  The reality is that we should be planning to defend against saturation attacks and, given the amount of time we’ve had, our base defense should be already prepared and thoroughly tested.
 

The Guam Defense System will ultimately integrate multiple independent fire control systems into something that can cope with complex and integrated attacks with salvos across the air and missile threat spectrum.[1]

“… will ultimately integrate …” ???!  What have they been waiting for?  This implies that a true, layered defense system is still years/decades away.
 
But wait … it gets still better.
 
Are we frantically (one presumes) building up our Guam defenses?  Of course we are, right?  We’d have to be utter morons not to be increasing our defenses.  Right? … Yeah, about that …
 

For several years, US military leaders from the Indo-Pacific region have emphasized the need to build up Guam as both a military staging point and an air-defense hub. However, the process hasn’t been easy, and in October, the MDA proposed scaling back the number of missile defense sites on the island from 22 to 16 due to environmental impact concerns.[1][emphasis added]

We’re decreasing our defenses?  Are you kidding me?  Since when is the defensive requirements of, arguably, our most important forward base determined by environmental concerns?  I’m all for reasonable environmental awareness in civilian communities and businesses but we cannot allow environmental concerns to dictate the defensive capability of our most important base.  If we need waivers or legislative action or whatever, we need to free the military from environmental concerns that negatively impact vital defense requirements.
 
You establish vital defense needs first and then make an honest effort to shoehorn whatever reasonable environmental concerns you can around the defenses.  We’re risking losing a war because of some isolated environmental concerns?  What kind of idiots are running the military?  Well, that was rhetorical because this blog has definitively established that blithering idiots are running the military.
 
We need to wake up and reassess our priorities and environmental concerns are not the number one priority.
 
 
 
_____________________________

 
[1]Breaking Defense, “Guam missile defenses conduct first-ever ballistic intercept in test”, Lee Ferran, 10-Dec-2024,
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/12/guam-missile-defenses-conduct-first-ever-ballistic-intercept/